No-Dig Gardener: Winter Sowing ... why I'm planning it in summer & why you should too.

At the end of my last no-dig gardener post, I said I'd be writing about winter-sowing next! 

I'm not in a hurry for winter.  I do have two [of my 4] daughters  who LOVE rainy, dark days ... I don't get it personally.
  

When I made the promise, I was in my stream of thought regarding remodelling parts of my kitchen garden ... and I'm always thinking a season or more ahead. It's not in my nature ... I've had to learn to by missing whole growing seasons for lack of prep!  Also, if you are new to winter sowing ... I'm giving you time to learn more before you need to start planning it. 

Having dug and planted the greenhouse, I'm now working on structuring a cold frame that will get good use protecting my winter sowings.   You can [like I have in the past] just line up your winter sowings against a wall.  I'm just being a bit fanciful. 

Winter sowing is as old as nature.  Grow something that usually survives in your climate and mimic what the plant has perfected.  Lob the seed out in autumn and when the temperature and light conditions are right [late winter/early spring] your seed will germinate.  

With winter sowing you control the environment in a few key ways to make the whole process fit in with your needs.  You don't want to lose your seeds or have them eaten and you want to make them easy to handle and store.
As well as this, you are going to protect them a little rather than lob them out into the big, bad world.  Optimise their chances.
I'll get to this with a link below.  It involves some recycling :-)  'Noice!'

You can also experiment to see how far you can stretch it and still succeed to produce hardy, strong plants.  The key factor is the temperature at which the seed will germinate.  If you won't have those temps outside until too late in the growing season for that plant ... don't bother [ie, tomatoes in the UK & Northern US!]  Keep to the propagator. 

Advantages: 

• Plants germinate early and grow slowly but strongly, developing great root systems before putting a lot of head growth on. 
• They are already 'hardened off'. 
• You get ahead of the season & they germinate when it is optimal for them. 
• You don't have overheating and lack of air, that can lead to rotting or disease. 
• You don't have clutter indoors [or leggy, window sill grown plants].  [My husband likes this bit!]
• no need to buy seed trays ... do some recycling!

Here is a step by step guild [the one in the image above]

A few things I learned:

1. protect your stuff from slugs!  No! What really?  Yep.  I lost a lot the first year.  It was all coming along beautifully until it warmed enough for slugs and snails, then munch and a lot was gone.
   Rookie error!  Kicked myself!
2. I write on my milk cartons with an OHP permanent marker [name of plant, date sown, any other info].  I label the bottom part of the milk carton.  Then I cut the label out and use it as a plant label when I plant them out. 
3. I re-use the top section of the milk bottle greenhouse to use as a mini cloche to protect young plants from rabbits in my garden.  I separate it from the bottom section when the plants are getting tall and need more air.  I push holes in the edges and use tent pegs to secure it over my beans/peas etc.  Then my beans can grow through the hole in the top and carry on up to a height where they can usually cope with rabbits.  They are very vulnerable when they are just a few leaves.  I usually drop a few [safe for organic gardening] slug pellets inside each top.  My chickens get in and LOVE to eat the pellets [not good], so this also helps keep the 'chooks' off the pellets.  [I'm not sure how many it will take to kill a chook.  So far it was a LOT before I realised and they seem fine, but I prevent it now.]

So, have fun winter sowing!  I suppose my other reason for writing this in early summer is the excited anticipation I have about it!